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When he spoke about Ukraine on Tuesday for the first time in over a month, President Vladimir V. Putins signal that Russia was open to a diplomatic resolution to the crisis seemed to cool temperatures at least for the moment. But it also illustrated the vast gulf between Moscows demands and what Western nations are even willing to discuss.

As NATO continues to ferry military support to Ukraines Eastern European neighbors, and with Russia planning more extensive drills this week on the European Unions doorstep in Belarus, the danger of the moment has not passed. President Biden has also approved the deployment of about 3,000 additional American troops to Eastern Europe, administration officials said on Wednesday.

But so far this week, much of the focus has shifted to diplomacy, beginning with an explosive clash between U.S. and Russian diplomats at the United Nations Security Council. Those diplomatic efforts continued with a flurry of meetings on Tuesday in both Moscow and Kyiv: Mr. Putin talked with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain visited President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

Its unclear if these individual efforts will advance hopes for peace, or hold them back.

Here are some takeaways:

As Western intelligence agencies watched railway cars filled with Russian tanks and artillery stream to the borders with Ukraine in December, Mr. Putin delivered a warning that painted the United States and NATO as the aggressors.

If our Western counterparts continue a clearly aggressive line, we will undertake proportionate military-technical countermeasures and will respond firmly to unfriendly steps, Mr. Putin said in televised remarks on Dec. 21.

Two days later, Mr. Putin went quiet on the issue in public a studied silence that kept the West guessing at his intentions. Russia issued a list of security demands, including pulling NATO forces out of nations that used to be part of the former Soviet Unions sphere of influence a nonstarter for the West. Still, the Biden administration responded in writing to Russias demands as part of a diplomatic effort to avert war.

So it was notable that when he finally broke his silence on Tuesday, Mr. Putin did not repeat his threatening language, saying that dialogue will be continued. But he made it clear that the chasm between what Russia wants and what the United States and NATO will discuss remains vast.

And he continued to accuse the West of trying to goad Russia into a conflict, saying that the Ukraine crisis was an attempt to contain Russias development and a pretext for imposing economic sanctions.

The U.S. tones down warnings, but will also send more troops to the region.

For weeks, American officials argued that Mr. Putin was on the cusp of ordering an attack on Ukraine, culminating in President Bidens prediction on Jan. 19: My guess is he will move in.

While other U.S. officials did not go quite as far, last week the Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, said that Russia was still adding to its troop buildup and that an incursion into Ukraine could be imminent. Those warnings escalated the next day when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that Moscow had amassed a large enough force to seize all of Ukraine.

But amid the burst of diplomatic meetings and after criticism from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that the United States talk of war was unhelpful the Biden administration appears to have softened its tone.

Asked on Tuesday whether it still believed an invasion was imminent, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told NPR: I would not say that we are arguing that its imminent, because we are still pursuing a diplomatic solution to give the Russians an off-ramp.

But the United States is also looking to get more troops on the ground in Eastern Europe. On Wednesday, the Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, said 3,000 additional troops would be sent to Poland and Romania.

We are making it clear that we are going to be prepared to defend our NATO allies if it comes to that, he said.

European leaders are pursuing one-on-one contact with Mr. Putin.

While the United States has presented itself as the leader of a unified Western response to Russia, European nations have made their own direct outreach to the Kremlin in an effort to cool temperatures. These overtures, as much as anything America does, could help determine whether the crisis is resolved peacefully.

President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy have spoken by phone with Mr. Putin in recent days, and Mr. Johnson, the British prime minister, was scheduled to do so on Wednesday.

Mr. Macron has urged a more conciliatory approach toward Moscow, arguing that Europe must take more responsibility for its own security because the United States is not as reliable an ally as it once was. Mr. Draghi issued a statement following a call with Mr. Putin on Tuesday, emphasizing the need to rebuild a climate of mutual confidence to resolve the crisis.

European nations have a keen interest in defusing tensions, partly because if a Russian invasion prompts harsh sanctions against Moscow, their economies, far more closely linked to Russias than that of the United States, would suffer.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

The outreach is also aimed at domestic audiences. Mr. Macron is trying to elevate himself as a statesman in advance of his re-election bid in April. And Mr. Johnson who has taken a tougher line than other European leaders, accusing Mr. Putin on Tuesday of holding a gun to Ukraines head is eager to deflect attention from the scandal over parties held at Downing Street in defiance of Englands Covid lockdowns.

Mr. Putin spoke about Ukraine on Tuesday while standing side-by-side with the leader of Hungary, a European Union member state and NATO ally. It was a pointed bit of diplomatic stagecraft aimed at demonstrating divisions in the West, as well as the fact that Mr. Putin is not isolated.

For the most part, the United States and its European allies have been on the same page, and Mr. Orban is an outlier. But Mr. Putin has sought to show he has other allies. The Kremlin said that President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil was preparing to visit Moscow. And perhaps most important for Mr. Putin, he will travel to China to meet on Friday with President Xi Jinping, hours before the start of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, which President Biden and others have vowed to boycott.

It will be the 38th time the two have met, according to Chinese officials, and the first time that Mr. Xi will meet in person with another world leader since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It follows a video summit in December at which Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin that they firmly support each other on issues concerning each others core interests and safeguarding the dignity of each country, according to Chinese state media.

Washington has watched with concern as the two nations have aligned themselves ever more closely, especially economically. Last month, China announced that annual trade with Russia had reached nearly $147 billion, compared with $68 billion in 2015, the year after Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In Ukraine, where some 14,000 people have been killed in a conflict that has been raging for years in two eastern breakaway provinces, people have reacted to the dire U.S. warnings and Russias menacing buildup with a mix of stoicism, apprehension and resolve.

Watching Mr. Zelensky on Tuesday was a case study in the contradictions and concern gripping Ukraine in the face of threats by its giant neighbor. He opened a new session of Parliament by calling for unity in the country, offering assurances that its economy was stable and praising the enormous show of diplomatic and military support from Ukraines allies. He avoided any direct mention of Russias massing of troops.

But after meeting with the leaders of Poland and Britain the latest in a long line of leaders making the pilgrimage to Kyiv to offer support Mr. Zelensky offered his own grim appraisal of the moment. Just days after chiding the United States for banging the drums of war, he warned that if diplomatic efforts failed, This is not going to be a war of Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be a European war, a full-fledged war.

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Five Takeaways on Ukraine Crisis, After Putin Breaks Silence - The New York Times

MINSK, 1 February (BelTA) Belarus ships up to 450 tonnes of peat briquettes to countries of the European Union every year. Vyacheslav Rakovich, Head of the Biogeochemistry and Agroecology Lab of the Nature Management Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, made the statement at a press conference held on 1 February in anticipation of the World Wetlands Day (2 February), BelTA has learned.

The scientist noted that the development of peatlands makes a substantial contribution to the Belarusian economy. In the last five years peat mining in Belarus varied from 1.7 million to 3.2 million tonnes per annum. Over 5,000 Belarusians work in the peat mining industry. About 1 million residents of Belarus enjoy heat generated thanks to peat. Peat briquettes represent a large share of Belarus' export. Countries of the European Union alone buy 200-450 tonnes of peat briquettes every year.

The Nature Management Institute is busy working out technologies that will allow reducing the volume of peat consumption in addition to raising its profitability. Fertilizers, absorbents, and growth stimulants based on peat are in development.

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Belarus sells up to 450 tonnes of peat briquettes to European Union every year - Belarus News (BelTA)

PARIS In 2019, Emmanuel Macron invited President Vladimir V. Putin to the French summer presidential residence at Brganon, declared the need for the reinvention of an architecture of security between the European Union and Russia, and later pronounced that NATO had undergone a brain death.

The French leader enjoys provocation. He detests intellectual laziness. But even by his standards, the apparent dismissal of the Western alliance and tilt toward Moscow were startling. Poland, among other European states with experience of life in the Soviet imperium, expressed alarm.

Now a crisis provoked by Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border has at once galvanized a supposedly moribund NATO against a Russian threat the alliances original mission and, for Mr. Macron, demonstrated the need for his own intense brand of 21st-century Russian engagement.

Dialogue with Russia is not a gamble, it is an approach that responds to a necessity, a senior official in the presidency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with French government practice, said Friday after Mr. Macron and Mr. Putin spoke by phone for more than an hour.

Later in the day, Mr. Macron spoke to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a move that placed the French leader precisely where he seeks to be ahead of an April presidential election: at the fulcrum of crisis diplomacy on Europes future.

Mr. Macron is walking a fine line. He wants to show that Europe has a core role to play in defusing the crisis, demonstrate his own European leadership to his voters, ensure that Germany and several skeptical European states back his ambitious strategic vision, and avoid giving the United States cause to doubt his commitment to NATO.

He wants to carve out a special role for himself and Europe, in NATO but at its edge, said Nicole Bacharan, a researcher at Sciences Po in Paris. The case for modernizing the European security arrangements in place since 1991 is compelling. But doing it with 130,000 Russian troops at the Ukrainian border is impossible.

Until now, Mr. Macron appears to have held the party line. Cooperation with the United States has been intense, and welcome. The president, one senior diplomat said, was involved in the drafting of the firm American response to Russian demands that the West cut its military presence in Eastern Europe and guarantee that Ukraine never join NATO a response judged inadequate in the Kremlin. Mr. Macron has made clear to Mr. Putin that, as a sovereign state, Ukraine has an inalienable right to make its own choices about its strategic direction.

Still, the itch in Mr. Macron to shape from the crisis some realignment of European security that takes greater account of Russian concerns is palpable.

The French official spoke of the necessity for a new security order in Europe, provoked in part by the decomposition of the old one.

He suggested that various American decisions had caused a strategic disorder, noting that there had been doubt at a certain moment about the quality of Article 5 the pivotal part of the NATO treaty that says an attack on any one member state will be considered an attack against them all.

This was a clear allusion to former President Donald J. Trumps dismissive view of NATO, a stance that the Biden administration has taken pains to rectify. For France, however, and to some degree Germany, the lesson has been that, come what may, Europe must stand on its own two feet because its trans-Atlantic partner could go on walkabout again, perhaps as early as 2024.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Macron have one thing in common: They both believe that the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe needs refashioning.

The Russian leader wants to undo the consequences of the Soviet collapse, which he has called the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century; push NATO back out of formerly Soviet-controlled countries to its posture before enlargement; and enshrine the idea of a Russian sphere of influence that limits the independence of a country like Ukraine.

What Mr. Macron wants is less clear, but it includes the development of a strong European defense capacity and a new stability order that involves Russia. As the French president said of this innovative arrangement in a speech before the European Parliament this month: We need to build it between Europeans, then share it with our allies in the NATO framework. And then, we need to propose it to Russia for negotiation.

The idea of Europe negotiating its strategic posture with Mr. Putin who has threatened a neighboring country, part of whose territory he has already annexed, without any apparent Western provocation makes European nations closer than France to the Russian border uneasy.

When Mr. Macron visited Poland in early 2020 after the scathing comment about NATO and the blandishments to Mr. Putin he was assailed at a dinner for Polish intellectuals and artists.

Dont you know who you are dealing with? demanded Adam Michnik, a prominent writer and historian imprisoned several times by the former Communist regime, according to a person present. Putins a brigand!

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

To which Mr. Macron responded that he knew very well whom he was dealing with, but given the American pivot to Asia it was in Europes interest to develop a dialogue with Russia and avoid a strengthened Russian-Chinese partnership. The Poles were unimpressed.

Mr. Macrons approach to Mr. Putin is consistent with his relations with other strongmen. He has engaged with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia men whose views of human rights and liberal democracy are far removed from his own in the belief that he can bring them around.

Up to now, the results have appeared paltry, as they were when he tried to forge a bond with Mr. Trump that proved short-lived.

The French presidents own views on the critical importance of the rule of law and respect for human rights have been a constant of his politics. His strong condemnation of the treatment of Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian dissident, irked Mr. Putin. He has made it clear that the annexation of Crimea will never be accepted by France. Engagement has not meant abandonment of principle, even if its endpoint is unclear.

Mr. Macron has also maneuvered effectively to use the Normandy Format, a grouping of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia, to bolster the cease-fire agreement the countries brokered in eastern Ukraine in 2015. This diplomatic format has the added attraction for him of showcasing Europeans trying to solve European problems. The French goal in the crisis is clear: de-escalation, a word often repeated.

If the president can be seen to have played a central role in achieving that, he will bolster his position in the election, where he currently leads in polls. The downside risk of his Russian gambit was put this way by Michel Duclos, a diplomat, in a recent book on France in the world: The more it appears that Mr. Macron gains no substantial results through dialogue, the more that dialogue cuts into his political capital in the United States and in anti-Russian European countries.

Nonetheless, Mr. Macron seems certain to persist. He is convinced that Europe must be remade to take account of a changed world. A degree of mutual fascination appears to bind him and Mr. Putin.

The senior French official observed that the Russian president had told Mr. Macron that he was the only person with whom he could have such profound discussions and that he was committed to the dialogue.

That will be music to the French presidents ears.

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How France's Macron Is Approaching the Ukraine Situation - The New York Times

For much of his 22 years in high office, Vladimir V. Putin has worked to carefully balance Russias position in Europe. He ingratiated himself with some capitals as he bullied others, and sought economic integration as he lambasted European values.

Even after Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 sent relations plunging, and Moscow harried some European countries with mass-scale disinformation and near-miss military fly-bys, it reached out to others if not exactly winning them over, then at least keeping diplomacy open.

But, with this winters crisis over Ukraine, Mr. Putin is overtly embracing something he had long avoided: hostility with Europe as a whole.

The more that Europe meets Moscows threats with eastward military reinforcements and pledges of economic punishments, papering over its otherwise deep internal disagreements, the more that Mr. Putin escalates right back. And rather than emphasizing diplomacy across European capitals, he has largely gone over them to Washington.

The shift reflects Moscows perception of European governments as American puppets to be shunted aside, as well as its assertion of itself as a great power standing astride Europe rather than an unusually powerful neighbor. It also shows Russias ambition to no longer simply manage but outright remake the European security order.

But in seeking to domineer Europe, even if only over the question of relations to Ukraine, Theres a risk of pushing Europe together, of amplifying more hawkish voices and capitals, said Emma Ashford, who studies European security issues at The Atlantic Council research group.

And theres the risk of pulling America back in, even as its trying to push America out of Europe, Ms. Ashford added of Moscows approach.

Mr. Putin has not given up on Europe completely. He did have a call with Emmanuel Macron, Frances president, on Friday. And he may still pull back from the crisis in time to recover European relations, or seek to do so once the dust settles.

But, if he persists, analysts warn that his approach could leave Europe more militarized and more divided, though with a Moscow-allied East far smaller and weaker than that in the Cold War.

The Kremlin has repeatedly signaled that, while its concerns with Ukraine may have brought it to this point, it seeks something broader: a return to days when Europes security order was not negotiated across dozens of capitals but decided between two great powers.

As in the late 1960s, direct interaction between Moscow and Washington could give a political framework to a future dtente, Vladimir Frolov, a Russian political analyst, wrote of Moscows ambitions.

This is not entirely a matter of hubris or great power ambition. It also reflects a growing belief in Moscow that this arrangement is, in effect, already so.

After Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, which Western governments punished with economic sanctions, the crisis was meant to be resolved with negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv, Paris and Berlin.

Though Washington applied pressure, it urged that the matter be settled among Europeans, hoping for a stable balance on the continent.

But while the letter of the so-called Minsk agreements nominally satisfied Russian demands, the Kremlin came away believing that Ukraine had reneged.

The conclusion in Moscow, by 2019 or so, Ms. Ashford said, was that European states are either unwilling or unable, probably unable, to compel Kyiv to follow through.

This also reinforced long-held views in Moscow that Germanys economic might or Frances diplomatic capital were in a world shaped by hard military power.

Theyre insignificant, theyre irrelevant, so theres this framing in Moscow that we have to talk to the U.S. because theyre the only ones that really matter, Ms. Ashford added.

Military power among the member states of the European Union, which has tried to assert itself as Moscows interlocutor on Ukraine, has substantially declined relative to both the United States and Russia in recent years. This was exacerbated by the departure of Britain.

At the same time, sharp divisions within Europe over how to deal with Russia have left the continent struggling for a coherent approach. The departure of Angela Merkel, Germanys longtime leader, and Mr. Macrons failed bids at unofficial European leadership have left Europe often adrift between an American-led status quo.

Outside of Paris and Brussels, everyone is pretty desperate for U.S. leadership on this crisis, Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told a Brookings Institution conference this week.

All of this means that Russia is somewhat verified in its view that Europe is a U.S. puppet and doesnt really need to be engaged separately, he added.

Though Mr. Putins exact plan for Ukraine remains, by seeming design, a mystery, he has emphasized that his agenda extends to Europe as a whole.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

In past crises over Ukraine, Russias aim has focused narrowly on that country, largely toward a goal of keeping it from aligning with the West. It sought to avoid triggering too much European opposition, and even tried to win European help in protecting its interests in Ukraine.

Now, perhaps as a result of its Ukraine-focused coercion having failed to achieve its objectives, Moscow is demanding an overhaul to the security architecture of Europe itself, by ending or even rolling back NATOs eastward expansion.

Such a change, however it came about, would mean altering the rules that have governed the continent since the Cold Wars end. And it would mean formalizing a line between West and East, with Moscow granted dominance in the latter.

Rather than seeking to manage the post-Cold War order in Europe, in other words, Moscow wants to overturn it. And that has meant attempting to coerce not just Ukraine, but Europe as a whole, making a standoff with the continent not only tolerable but also a means to an end.

The most militarily powerful state on the continent does not see itself as a stakeholder in Europes security architecture, Michael Kofman, a Russia scholar at C.N.A., a research center, wrote in an essay this week for the site War on the Rocks.

Rather, as a result of Moscow rattling that infrastructure or even seeking to pull it down, Mr. Kofman added, European security remains much more unsettled than it appears.

Mr. Putins willingness to accept broad hostilities with Europe could strengthen his hand in Ukraine, by demonstrating that he is willing to risk even the continents collective wrath to pursue his interests there.

But regardless of what happens in Ukraine itself, entrenching a hostile relationship between Russia and Europe sets them down a path that carries uncertainty and risk for them both.

Cycles of sanctions, diplomatic expulsions, and various forms of retaliation, Mr. Kofman wrote, can easily take on a logic of their own, escalating in ways that hurt both sides. Both Russia and Europe are economically vulnerable to one another and already face unstable domestic politics.

Relations between Moscow and European capitals have rarely been warm. But they have, for the most part, plodded along, overseeing, among many other shared concerns, a Russia-to-Europe energy trade on which virtually the entire continent relies.

There is also a risk for the United States: being pulled deeper into a part of the world it had hoped to de-emphasize so it might focus instead on Asia.

Shorter-term, a divided Europe would seem to risk exactly what Moscow has long sought to avoid: more American power in Europes east, and greater European unity, however grudging, against Russia.

The approach that the Kremlin is taking toward Europe right now, on the surface, to me at least, seems quite shortsighted, Ms. Ashford said.

The most concerning possibility, some analysts say, is not that Mr. Putin is bluffing or that he does not see these downsides though either could be true but rather that this is a choice, of dividing Europe against him for the sake of his interests in Ukraine, that he is making willingly.

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Putin Has Long Tried to Balance Europe. Now Hes Working to Reset It. - The New York Times

The United States is working with the European Union to prevent any energy supply disruption resulting from the conflict between Ukraine and Russia,President BidenJoe BidenFormer chairman of Wisconsin GOP party signals he will comply with Jan. 6 committee subpoena Romney tests positive for coronavirus Pelosi sidesteps progressives' March 1 deadline for Build Back Better MORE and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a joint statement Friday.

Biden and von der Leyen said the U.S., which is the top supplier of liquified natural gas to the European Union, is working with the EU to circumvent any supply shock amid the Ukraine-Russia standoff.

We are collaborating with governments and market operators on supply of additional volumes of natural gas to Europe from diverse sources across the globe. [Liquefied natural gas (LNG)] in the short-term can enhance security of supply while we continue to enable the transition to net zero emissions, the statement reads. The European Commission will work for improved transparency and utilization of LNG terminals in the EU.

The two leaders also said they remain committed to integrating Ukraines gas and electricity supply into the EUs markets as the U.S. and EU work toward their respective goals on transitioning to renewable energy.

The Biden administration previously said it is working closely with other nations and energy companies for a contingency plan in case of a Russian invasion that hurts natural gas infrastructure.

Were working with countries and companies around the world to ensure the security of supply, to mitigate against price shocks affecting both the American people and the global economy, a senior administration official said Tuesday.

Russia is the source of more than 40 percent of European natural gas, much of which flows through Ukraine. In 2021, the Biden administration lifted some sanctions on Russian entities tied to construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was set to carry gas from Russia to Germany.

Critics said allowing the pipeline, which would circumvent Ukraine, would further isolate the smaller country from European allies. However, the administration said it had determined it would not be possible to prevent construction of the pipeline without sanctioning German and European entities as well.

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US, Europe working to avoid Ukraine-related energy 'supply shock' | TheHill - The Hill